[Beowulf] purse strings

[Greg Lindahl]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 05:16:03PM +0200, Geoff Galitz wrote:

> I'm not so sure the process really differs between academia and the 
> commerial sector.  I work in both regularly and in my experience they are 
> quite similar.

I've done both and they're wildly different, because all my academic
buys were required to be from the lowest bidder. This was at a US
state school, with NSF money.

Likewise the US government generally requires bidding, & the lowest
bidder (or highest performance for a fixed $$) is generally the
winner, although "best value" evaluation is often formally involved.

It's rare for a US company to require buying from the lowest bidder.

-- greg